Bravado's House of Blues (20 page)

Retrieving Dad had been a near disaster. I’d been so freaked out by all that blue sky, and open space, I’d barely registered anything beyond the narrow field of vision through the plexi-steel visor. I looked upwards once, and took a little chemical siesta while my brain tried to shut down.

Once I’d recovered, I got him into the rover. For sixteen hours we’d driven through shattered cities, and towns that nature had mostly reclaimed, a surreal landscape of beauty and ruin enhanced by mood mellowers and anxiety.

This time, I opted for plain old sleep. But we’d make Pasco in a few hours. This bird was damn fast. Been a long time since I’d flown. Funny how this AI was so like the AI we used in the compound. Same droning voice, same inability to get the simplest of jokes, and yet couldn’t carry on a conversation about anything other than wind speed, fuel levels and time to destination. The simplest things like movies were totally lost on him.

The spot where I’d found Dad flashed on the overhead when I woke. The satellites showed a residual level of radiation well below safety protocols. Bio-scanners showed the landing zone clear of anything larger than a dog. Not that I’d be safe with a pack of dogs ripping me to pieces.

I pulled on the exoskeleton, sealed the bio seals around my helmet and tested the breathers. The flechettes rested in my lap and I said a quick prayer to Dad’s favorite saint: Elvis of Memphis.

We touched down near the remains of an old box store. “Thirty-Seven Acres of Savings,” the sign said. That alloy paint may be the last man-made thing on the planet, when all else is overrun by the wild.

“Gramps, you with me?”

“Sure, kiddo,” his voice whispered through my suit. “I’m right here.”

The second ampoule of chemical bliss sat poised in the injector, but I hesitated. “If I totally freak, could you launch this shot of happy for me?” I said with a nervous laugh. “I want to keep my wits about me.”

“You got it, sport. I’ll keep the VTOL locked down and ride along with you. You call if you need anything.”

“Right. Oh, is Mom working?”

“Oh, yeah,” he said with a sigh. “Bitching about your lack of safety protocol and questioning how you got your dad killed. But besides that, and a mutant viral plague beastie taking over the nastier bits of our home, we’re all peachy.”

Stepping out of the airship almost stymied me. I couldn’t have a repeat of last time. I’d been damn lucky.

Now, the sharp blue sky burned into my retinas and the myriad of greens, browns and grays of the city of Pasco succumbing to the encroaching wilderness just about flipped my switch.

“Heart rate is spiking; you okay, sonny-boy?”

I closed my eyes and took three slow breaths. I’d done this before, just needed to concentrate. I focused on an outcropping of concrete and steel that had once been a bunker of some sort and stepped through the door of the VTOL. It closed with a hiss.

I spent the better part of the next hour creeping from one ruined building to the next, breathing slowly, and keeping my bad self low to the ground. “I am a shadow.”

Grandpa chuckled quietly while I moved.

“Seventy meters east,” Gramps said after another few moves. “GPS has your last DNA signature at alpha on your screen.”

A virtual overlay was painted on my retina, giving me a three-dimensional map of the surrounding area.

“What was Dad looking for?” I asked.

“He claimed to be looking for radioactive isotopes, but we both know those were long gone.”

“That’s what I told him,” I said. “But he never listened to me.”

“Want me to hazard a guess?”

“Sure.”

“He got wind that the Femme-Bots out of Portland had set up an outpost here. He was scouting either a trade, or information for a later raid.”

“Raid?” I spun toward the ship, as if Gramps was there, watching me. “He was going to raid the Portland Collective?”

“Femme-Bots, your old man called them,” he said with a hint of glee in his voice. “Robot chickees with lasers for nipples. I bet they wear those little plaid skirts, white bobby socks and black Mary Janes.”

I couldn’t tell, but it sounded like he might be drooling. Hard for a virtual entity. “You’re a perv, old man,” I said. “If they were robots, like Dad thought, why’d they wear all that?”

“Sex appeal,” he replied as if I were the stupidest ape left on the planet.

I chuckled and let the old man describe the Portland crew to his lascivious delight.

Past a long brick warehouse, around the south side of alpha zone, I saw something I had never seen in my life. Three women, and I knew they were women despite the fact they weren’t naked or writhing in oil, as all of Grandpa’s surviving vids had them portrayed. They were quite elegant; two were tall, one with black hair, the other with deep, rich brown. The third was small and wispy, with flowing red hair.

“Damn, no blondes,” Gramps whispered into the comm.

I slid a flechette out of the left holster and crept forward. As far as I could hear, I moved like the wind, but the way they snapped around should’ve been a warning.

When the sniper from the warehouse hit me in the right shoulder, I was bathed in bright intensive light. Every nerve in my body seemed to overload at the same time. They were screaming and waving their arms, so I didn’t notice a second shot. The fire that roared through my head nearly blocked out Grandpa’s final words.

“Damn, need to thaw another grandchild.” Then the happy juice hit me. “Nice knowing you, kid. Better luck next trip around.”

Colors are a wonderful thing. Funny how green pain is.

*

When you die you go to heaven—I remember heaven from a story I heard as a wee bairn. Angels live in heaven. I remembered that much, girls with large . . . um . . . wings, yeah, white wings and halos.

I knew I had died and gone to heaven because an angel woke me from the shiny greenness of pain. She smelled like lilacs and sunshine. When I opened my eyes, and she leaned over me, the light haloed around her vibrant red hair, a golden glowing circle of joy.

She smiled at me, and her teeth were the color of old tires—at least they were still in her head. The stench of rot overpowered the lilacs and I felt Turkey Medley driving up from below. I turned to the side and relived lunch. Her smile broke at my revulsion and she covered her face with a gnarled left hand. The red wig slipped to the side, exposing a mottled scalp of radiation scars and sores.

A deep rumbling laugh echoed behind my head, filling the room with the corrupt echoes of hate. “See how he looks at you,” a harsh voice mocked. “You thought to find a life with this weak creature?”

The girl-thing that had come to me with light and lilacs slipped from my vision and rasped a little squeak. “He’s so pretty,” she said.

“He’s one of them,” the harsh voice spat. “He’s a man, ain’t he. Those guns he had on his hips weren’t the only weapon he carries.”

I grunted as a rough hand pressed down on my crotch. Luckily the exoskeleton supported her weight or I might have been singing soprano.

“His kind did this to the world, haven’t we taught you that?”

The large woman, seven feet tall with armored breasts and a shaved, malformed head loomed into my range of vision. I couldn’t turn my head, but I could move my eyes.

“His kind needs to be wiped off the Earth.”

“But what about the babies?” the plaintive girl asked. “I so want a baby.”

“Stupid breeder,” the warrior woman said, turning and spitting onto the side of the wall. We were inside the warehouse. Meant they hadn’t found the VTOL.

“How come I’m not dead?” I managed, though as soon as I’d spoken I knew it was a mistake. The mailed fist crashed against the side of my head, forcing the colors to return.

“Oh, for god’s sake. Cut out his tongue if he speaks again,” she said and stomped toward a shattered door and peering out. “Magenta, you stupid whore. You make sure he’ll live, then leave him alone, you hear me?”

“You aren’t staying,” the angel squeaked.

“We need to seal the bunker and high-tail it out of here. We have muties on the move.”

The wrecked girl smiled her broken smile again and nodded solemnly.

She stabbed me in the arm, pushing a tube of fluid into my body. It was like taking the happy juice, only it burned.

“We won’t really hurt you much,” she whispered in my left ear. “We need the DNA. Cloning is losing its cohesiveness. Getting freaks like me,” she said with a small hiccough. “I should’ve been pretty.”

“Thought you were an angel,” I said through the fog of drugs. “Golden halo and hair of fire.”

“Oh, my,” she said, clasping my hand. “The sisters will not waste this one.”

I felt her stripping away the exoskeleton, heard each piece fall to the floor—echoes of my father’s dismemberment. Then she cut away my enviro-suit. Likely I’d be exposed to some disease or other I’d never built an immunity to, alas. Slow death, fast death. It was all the same in the end.

I slipped in and out of consciousness, but there was a moment when she was above me and I’d once again gone to heaven. I could feel her against my naked body, doing things I’d only dreamt about. She made tiny squeaking noises as she moved atop me, her hands pushing against my chest as she rose and fell. Then the world evaporated into a soft white mist.

“Hell’s a coming,” Gramps said from the floor near my head. I blinked a few times, trying to clear my vision and turned to see the comm-link poking out of the ruined suit piled beside me. Magenta lay curled against me, her naked breast pushed against my chest. I barely noticed the burning in my back had returned.

“Grandpa,” I whispered, wondering if I’d ever get the feeling back in my right arm. Her mottled head had cut off the circulation, but her hands, gnarly and rough, felt kinda nice on my skin.

“You are screwed, boy-o,” he said. “Thought I’d lost you, likely to still, but we might have a chance.”

“Yeah,” I asked as Magenta moved in her sleep, drifting her hand down to the thinking part of my body.

“Can you get to the VTOL? They are likely packing you south of Portland. Not sure where yet, but my guess is somewhere near Bend, or perhaps Crater Lake.”

“How’s that help me?” I asked, slipping my arm out from under Magenta’s head and pushing her hand from my crotch. She rolled to the side, pillowing her head against my ruined enviro-suit.

“Your mother has a handle on the mutant beastie in our home. Ain’t nothing she’s ever seen, but the DNA is human-like.”

“Might be a clue here,” I said sitting up. “They’ve got some sort of bunker here. Might be messing about with gene mods.”

“Could be,” the old man said.

“Their breeding is going to heck. Might be mucking about with something new since Mom stopped getting the journals regularly.”

“Weapon grade stuff there in Pasco before the world went black.” He paused again, a new symptom I was unused to. “Oh, and I found your father’s head.”

“Excellent. Where?”

“It’s in the central camp, about three hundred yards from you.”

“That’s just fine and dandy,” I said, looking around for a weapon. “But right now I’m naked with a horny mutant girl, and at least two Amazon warrior types who would just as soon see my tongue ripped out. Or worse.”

“We think we can use Rapture on the mutant thingy, if we wanted, but your mother is convinced it may be intelligent. She’s trying to establish communication.”

I slid off the platform and leaned groggily against a broken strut, my dangly bits drawing up inside my body for warmth. Not the most pleasant experience. Magenta made a little noise as the sound of gunfire rattled in the distance.

“You get to your father’s head then get to the plane, we’ll worry about the thing that ate the workshop. You figure a way out of the mess you’re in, got it?”

“Yeah, sure, Grandpa. I’ll just waltz through their camp, pick up a robot head, slip out of their clutches and fly home naked.”

“Yeah, tough sell. Maybe if you had a pizza delivery uniform and a large bottle of lubricant.”

I stopped digging through my gear, confused. “What?”

“Never mind,” he said with a sigh. “So, any blonde femme-bots there?” he asked, his voice full of hope.

“No.”

“Plaid skirts, bobby socks?”

“No.”

“Damn,” he said.

“But I think Magenta and I might have done the deed,” I said, a flush creeping over my chilled body. “Likely I’ll catch something.”

“Nice work, boy. Get them out of their panties and you have half the game won.”

I shook my head. I may not be the smartest guy when it came to other people. Heck, I hadn’t spoken with anyone but my crazy relatives for a very long time. But I had the feeling that perhaps their views on women, especially, were a little off base.

More gunfire echoed inside the building. I looked around for anything to use as a weapon when Amazonia crashed into the long room.

“Magenta, you stupid bitch. Wake up.”

Magenta sat up, disheveled with her wig on sideways, and naked as the day she slipped out of her momma.

“What the hell,” Amazonia said, looking from me to Magenta. “Stupid, filthy . . .” she strode to me, grabbed me by the hair and flung me into a pile of broken tables. The burn on my back screamed awake once again, and the world swam with swirls of green.

Magenta stood up, one hand covering her rather nice breasts, and the other lower, covering her own thinking area.

Amazonia hit her twice. Once in the face with a balled-up fist, then a sharp kick to the ribs. The crack I heard sounded like broken bones. “Stupid, worthless . . .” She spat and turned to me. “She may be enamored with your amazing phallus—”

She strode toward me, one metallic hand groping for my private parts.

“—but I’ve never been fond of the leaky little meat puppet.”

I screamed as her hand squeezed my softer parts and I punched her in the face.

She grinned at me, a feral twist of broken lip and bloodied teeth. Then she head-butted me. Stars exploded in my head for a moment. When they cleared, she leaned more upright and flipped a knife from her belt with her free hand. “Let’s harvest this little thing and see if Magenta still finds you so pretty.”